Me and my friends, who don't play fighters, just played this game for 3 hours straight. What an incredible experience. Three guys, with loser hands off controller rules, just played it for 3 hours. And had fun the entire time. Every character has some quirk that makes them interesting (even if I hate the slowbies Hakumen and Tager), and some of the battles look incredible artful. The pacing, priority and mobility of the characters makes it a joy even to watch. Whereas Mortal Kombat often degrades into cheap effective moves, Street Fighter turns into reflex tests, BlazBlue rewards adaptation rather than rote technique building. It's not enough to learn a guy's pattern and then throw your counter, because he has a chance to turn your counter move on you, and the amount of options available to every character at every juncture of the fight is astounding.

As for me, I've developed one hell of a game with Rachel. She has perhaps the most frustrating style because she is what we in RPG circles refer to as a controller. She affects the battlefield and forces you to adapt to her. Her mobility with the wind flight makes it impossible to truly trap her, and her frogs and posts make you change your movement.

My favorite character is either Taokaka or Litchi... Tao is simply crazy mobile, and I always favor mobility... and Litchi has simply one of the classiest looking mechanics I've ever seen. She is 100% about technique, and it looks so beautiful when played right that I'm going to figure it out.

Good stuff man, good stuff. And I agree about Litchi. Very very fun to watch - she's going to be my sub once I get good enough with Arakune to warrant having a sub character.